Throwback Thursday–falling

Yesterday I saw this picture on one of my teammate Lauren’s social media pages.

Seeing this reminded me of another Throwback Thursday story.

If you have ever been a high school runner in NJ I’m sure you are familiar with running at Holmdel. You may even remember that when you get up the bowl(for non-NJ people the bowl is a very large hill) and closer to the end of the race there is a downhill– a pretty steep downhill. One time I fell down that hill. When I fell down that hill people hurdled over me. Then there was blood–lots of blood. My reaction was probably more shocked then mad. I fell/fall a lot so that wasn’t shocking. What was shocking was the amount of blood. I knew I had really gotten hurt this time. Some of my teammates began running by me acting concerned but I told them to just keep running. Then I got up. I had defiantly hurt my arm, my hip, my knees, and my hands. I decided I should finish the race. So I did. I hobbled across the finish line and my coach and my parents looked horrified. Prior to this race my mom had to sign a consent form incase I got hurt….irony??

That night I had to visit the emergency room. My arm was swollen and bruising and I couldn’t move it so to rule out broken bones my parents took me to the ER. I thank the running gods that it wasn’t broken.

Throughout this whole experience people kept asking me why I got up and finished. I guess I’ll finally answer that question.

Why did I get up??
-I was almost done the race anyway
-People kept stopping to help me but they needed to finish the race. I needed to let them.
-My team needed me to get up and cross the finish line.
-Guilt. I had never not finished a race at that point in my life.
-To prove I could finish a race in this situation so that if it ever happened again at a more impotent race I would know I could finish.
-My mother signed the consent form and probably would have freaked out if a search party was sent into the trail to find me. (Sorry mom, let’s be honest you would have been mad if that happened)
-I wanted to wear the meet shirt. I don’t believe in wearing race shirts until the race is over so I needed to finish.
-Because #yolo?? YOLO wasn’t a thing in 2003 but back then I figured why not attempt to run in this bloody state and see what happens, hence my 2014 use of #yolo.
–Because I knew at the early age of 16 that you can get up from any fall if you choose to. No fall is ever so bad that you can’t recover or stand back up eventually.

I’ll always get back up.